Market, and which we ourselves dissected. The experienced Professor Bouley, from the Ecole Vétérinaire of Alfort, near Paris, whose visit must have been beneficial to England, clearly recognised in an ox which was slaughtered and dissected at the Metropolitan Market, the genuine pustule of typhoid fever. But in most cases, as we shall show, it is the other forms which prevail.
We make these observations in order to anticipate the objections of those reasoners who, being more influenced and guided by the local facts and by the symptoms, than by the general phenomena of comparative pathology, might argue that such or such fact is opposed to our doctrine.
In a word, then, typhous diseases have their types; but the living being is subjected to so many different influences, hereditary, idiosyncratic, climataic, hygienic, &c., that by the side of one subject going through the course of morbid phenomena with fatal regularity, another may be seen in which such or such functional derangement is readily distinguished. Thus in some animals, predisposed thereto by prior disorders, the morbid action originally propelled towards the channels of respiration will continue to be most salient; and after dissection the lungs will be congested and emphysematous, and the intestines relatively but scarcely altered. The animal, indeed, though bordering on typhus, will sink under the effect of functional derangement in the breathing passages. In others, by the influence of some particular predisposing cause, disorders of the nervous centres will be signalized; a cerebral and spinal pains will be intolerable, delirium will quickly ensue, and the asphyxiated patient, if a man, will succumb in the course of a few days; or if an ox, he will be wild and ungovernable, and then fall as if thunderstruck, fastened to his stall. Finally, in other cases, these first two phases of the distemper will not prove fatal, the intestinal injuries will pursue their course, and the affected animals will not die until the third period.
As we have seen, the morbid phenomena may be different, although the affection continues the same; the typhoid fever or the typhus being nevertheless the essential disease which prevails.
These generalities, to some readers, may appear irrelevant, but let them not be mistaken; they have a claim to our notice, and are really important. They show, indeed, that independent of the preventive treatment, which is an absolute rule in the case of virulent, contagious, and non-recurring diseases, the treatment of the disease itself, when it has declared itself, and when it pursues its course, cannot be the same for every patient; and that, moreover, this treatment must vary in the different phases of the disease, as physicians and veterinarians are well aware.
These generalities, likewise, explain the various diseases – viz., those in which the animals blend together the typhous and exanthematic diseases. The measles and the scarlet fever, affecting the external or internal membranes, are like the first steps of these maladies; they are generally slight, and we have but to watch over the progress of the symptoms, and to assist nature, which, with few exceptions, brings all things to a favourable issue.
These disorders, which are relatively slight and do not provoke in the economy any of those changes which in some sort transform the constitution, are not absolutely proof against relapse. They lead us rationally and by degrees to the more infectious and contagious diseases, to the common typhus; therefore it is unnecessary to apply the preventive treatment to them, that being exclusively reserved for the latter.
Let it then be well understood, that the typhus of the ox, the study of which we are about to enter upon, may vary in its symptoms and post-mortem appearances, without losing thereby the characteristic mark which renders it a thoroughly distinct, and, in the present day, a thoroughly well known distemper.
Now that the reader possesses these general notions of the Contagious Typhus, we shall be able to speak to him in a language which he will understand, and give a definition which he will be able to judge and appreciate.
The typhus of the ox, then, is a virulent, contagious, febrile, and non-recurring disease, with stupor and derangement of the nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions; leaving various changes in the respective organs of these functions, and chiefly in the intestines.
This new definition seems to us to be more faithful and just than those hitherto given; and this, if needed, we could demonstrate.
I do not disguise from myself that some of the opinions expressed in these generalities may, at first sight, appear strange and liable to objection. Thus, it may be argued that inoculation as a preventive treatment of typhous maladies is far from being a general law, applicable to every case; since in Russia, for instance, where this inoculation is practised every day, it completely fails in certain foreign herds, and they die of the consequences of the operation; and that this, therefore, might happen in England.
To these objections we would reply, first, as regards the novelty of opinions expressed, that we have taken up the pen, because we had to write something different from what has already been published in known works, otherwise it would have been our duty to remain silent; and secondly, as regards the inefficacy of inoculation, that organic and vital phenomena have their principles and their laws, which are fixed and invincible, from which it is reasonable to deduce consequences and positive rules of conduct, which cannot yield to superannuated opinions or imperfectly executed experiments. To institute experiments indeed under the rigorous conditions of a logical and irrefutable demonstration, is not so easy a matter as may generally be thought.
For our part, the principles deduced from strict observation are the basis on which we build, and if it so chance that we are baffled in our experiments we vary them indefinitely; and if still we are deceived in our hopes, we ascribe the miscarriage to our impotence, to inadequate means, and to the defective instruments which the physical and chemical sciences, still in their cradle as regards organic matter, supply for our use. Above all, we wish it to be remembered – "Scribo nec ficta, nec picta, sed quæ ratio, sensus, et experientia docent."
CHAPTER II
I have drawn my conclusions as to the preventive treatment of typhus in the ox, from the knowledge I had acquired of its morbid phenomena, its nature, and its non-recurrence; and it is a logical deduction quite as accurate as could be the result of a syllogism. The study of the origin of this typhus, and of the causes by which it is generated and spread abroad, will supply us with additional arguments to sustain this deduction, as well as those signs and indications which are the very foundation of curative treatment. The description of the disease will contribute to the same result; for the rational treatment of a distemper can be derived only from a knowledge of all the phenomena which occasion it, of the functional derangements, and of the alterations observed in bodies after death.
I wish particularly to say at once, in entering upon the subject of etiology, that the special works which treat of it contain precise information as to the causes and origin of the typhus in horned cattle; and that the chief organs of the press in every country – those ephemeral encyclopædias in which unfortunately so much vital force and intelligence are dissipated – have published articles of the highest interest on this subject. It would be physically impossible for me to begin again a bibliographical labour similar to the one exhibited in the First Part, in order to afford due justice to each of these public writers, who have met the epizootia on the confines of their country and fought hand to hand with it. This work is not susceptible of so much enlargement. Let it be well understood, that I claim no other merit than that of discussing these questions of etiology, in that order and with that common sense which fix ideas firmly in the mind – which, if I may use the term, photograph them on those parts of the brain allotted to the memory and judgment; also of drawing from known and admitted facts more rational and practical conclusions than those which have been current up to the present time.
Much has been already said and argued on the origin of the contagious typhus which affects the ox; some adhering exclusively to the special conditions observable in the breed of those oxen which are reared and fed on the steppes of Russia and Hungary; others,
